The city of Tampere, surrounding municipalities and joint municipal board sign extensive IT services agreement with Fujitsu

Fujitsu Finland

lokakuu 29, 2010

The city of Tampere, the municipalities of the urban region and the Pirkanmaa hospital district (PSHP) have today, 29th October, signed an IT service agreement with Fujitsu Services Oy. Fujitsu will provide IT infrastructure and system services under the agreement to eight municipalities in the Tampere region and the hospital district. The services will be provided in accordance with Fujitsu's Patja and Sohva service models.

Besides the city of Tampere, also Nokia, Pirkkala, Lempäälä, Ylöjärvi, Kangasala, Vesilahti and Orivesi joined the agreement. In addition to the Pirkanmaa hospital district the agreement covers public utilities, that is, the Laboratory and Pharmacy Public Utility, the Imaging Centre and its subsidiary the Heart Center.

This is supposedly the largest IT outsourcing initiative ever undertaken in the Finnish municipal branch. More than 20,000 desktops and one thousand servers will be incorporated in the Patja service. Moreover, there are hundreds of operational applications and their availability services which will be managed in compliance with Fujitsu's Sohva service model.

Previously, Tampereen Tietotekniikkakeskus Liikelaitos, TIO was responsible for the IT services of the city of Tampere. Now one hundred IT experts of TIO will transfer to Fujitsu as old employees.

"A central element in the tender process was the divestment of TIO to new service providers. The tender process took place over the spring 2010. Among our goals were to procure services after a thorough evaluation of the service providers on the market, and to strengthen collaborative opportunities," says Juha Yli-Rajala, director, finances and strategies, the city of Tampere.

"The new multi-vendor environment brings a huge operational change where the most important is to get all the parties to collaborate seamlessly. Particularly in responsibility handover situations it is of critical importance that the services run flawlessly also when the new service providers take on the service responsibility," says project manager Sari-Anne Hannula of the city of Tampere.

The personnel of Tampere, the urban region and the hospital district annually make some 100,000 IT equipment and applications related service requests.

"We need a service integrator who will take a comprehensive responsibility for the ICT services and service requests in a centralised manner through a single point of contact, which will help the users in all their problems, also those associated with telecommunications carriers, application suppliers and the services provided by the customers' own IT management," says Sari-Anne Hannula.

”The customer's all service requests will be directed to a centralised service desk where Fujitsu experts either resolve them immediately or route them further to other assignment groups," says regional director Pasi Lehmus of Fujitsu Tampere.

"This is an important agreement to us and we will do our best to smoothly start up the services and maintenance. Along with the new service agreements we will be employing new experts to our core services. Fujitsu will now have two offices in Tampere, one in the town centre, in the Finlayson area, another in Naulakatu, at Tietotalo,” Pasi Lehmus continues.

The Patja and Sohva services will be deployed in Tampere and the Pirkanmaa Hospital District at the start of November. Other municipalities will join the service in stages starting from February 2011.